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Sata Drive recognition issue preventing addition of 2nd drive

robert888

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Posted December 8, 2012 at 11:04AM

Have XP on C drive and looking to install Win 7 on 2nd Sata drive for dual boot. However, when installing a 2nd Sata drive my XP bios identifies it correctly as a Sata drive but my PC Disk management recognises it as a Removeable disk preventing me from installing Win 7. I have tried a couple of different Sata disks with the same result.

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difarn

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Posted December 8, 2012 at 4:05PM

You may find the attached article useful - it says that the problem may be as a result of the drive not being partitioned and formatted after installation.

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robert888

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Posted December 8, 2012 at 4:30PM

I tried 2 sata drives without success. The first drive was recently cloned from the main xp c drive via external enclosure so it contains everything from the c drive (format and partition). However, when I mounted the cloned drive as an internal drive windows initially identified it as a removable drive but since then does not see it at all except in the bios.

The second drive was formatted and partitioned (no data) and that produced the same results.

Interesting that when I put either of these drives in an external hdd usb enclosure they are both identified in bios and windows as drives but not when they are mounted internally. Of course external hard drive enclosures use their own power supply!

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difarn

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Posted December 8, 2012 at 4:38PM

I don't suppose....

Go to start > control panel (switch to Classic View) > administrative tools

> computer management > storage : disk management

second disk will show, but not active(initialized)

need to make active by right clicking on window that represents the drive then make active partition(drive) select to create partition (if applicable) select format (if applicable)

wait and drive will change status to "healthy" at top windows and your drive/data will now be accessible and visible in 'My Computer'

will do it?

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lotvic

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Posted December 8, 2012 at 6:19PM

If you make it 'Active' the bios will look to boot into it when you switch the pc on.... You can only have one partition on harddrive Active at a time.

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robert888

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Posted December 8, 2012 at 6:56PM

To recap - initially when I mounted the sata as a 2nd internal drive it would appear in Disk Management as a Removable Disk with no options to do anything with it (if you clicked on it you would be asked to insert a disk!). Now, none of the sata drives (which are not faulty) are detected in Disk Management or My Computer although still detected in Bios.

When I put a Sata drive in an external usb hdd enclosure with its own power source it detects the drive in Disk Management and displays the drive as normal i.e. Healthy Active. This enables me to do a back up or clone but as previously stated I need a 2nd working internal drive to put Win 7 on. It just seems as though I need some sort of Sata controller.

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lotvic

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Posted December 9, 2012 at 12:13AM

Please read following thread on tomshardware.co.uk forum especially Hawkeye22's post at 04-28-2011 at 10:19:07 PM "SATA ports have two modes, IDE and RAID/AHCI"

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/268758-14-dual-boot-windows-each-individual-hard-drives

The thread is not about xp seeing 2nd drive as removable as such, but the info seems to be relevant and deals with dual boot on separate harddrives, this may throw some light on your problem.

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